The following is a guest post from Anand Srinivasan. Anand Srinivasan is the founder of KnewThis.com – the World’s first Ask&Answer Website to help affiliate webmasters earn valuable back links and traffic.
What are the factors that we look into while installing a new WordPress theme? Though I do not have a statistic on this, you can pretty much say that most bloggers are sold with the homepage design of the blog design. This is because, most theme developers save their best work for the home page and while we compare the different themes, it is mostly done with the home page design only.
However, in doing so, we might be ignoring the importance of the design on individual pages. Why is that important? It is because; most often visitors to our website/blog come through these inner pages. As a result, unless you build the trust and authority on this page, no matter how cool your homepage looks, you might not be making too many sales.
So, let’s see what you need to consider while looking into the design. Many times, we have bloggers who go for three-columns simply because it gives them more scope to display ads and other navigational elements (like Recent Blog Posts, Categories, etc.). These days, we have also started seeing four column WordPress themes because the computer resolutions are getting better.
Simply because there is scope to display more does not mean you have to. What is your blog trying to achieve? Is it simply monetizing off search engine visitors who might never actually become loyal readers? Is it building a trusted circle to whom you sell other products? Your design should be made depending on this.
Here would be my suggestion: If you are one of those who have already built a trusted circle or if you are simply dependent on search engines for traffic, the amount of content you display does not matter. This is because in the former case, you are a trend-setter of sorts and what you do, people would see as an intelligent move and not get distracted. In the latter case, people do not care about your site and come just for content. Monetizing off them is not actually harsh.
It is when you are in the process of setting up a trusted network or when you need to gain trust before selling your product that the design heavily matters. In that case, ensure that your top-fold of the page displays only two things prominently – the content of the page and the product that will make the visitors’ life easier. Of course, how you present the content is a different topic altogether. But if design can influence purchase decisions, you need to display only these two and do not work upon stuffing your site with navigational elements, Google ads,etc. They always backfire.
The above is a guest post from Anand Srinivasan. Anand Srinivasan is the founder of KnewThis.com – the World’s first Ask&Answer Website to help affiliate webmasters earn valuable back links and traffic.
From Shivanand: At the end of the day there are many factors that come into play while deciding upon a blog layout. A particular layout may benefit one blogger more than the other. So your mileage may vary. However let your visitors and their requirement decide what works best for your blog.
